It’s not a great week when you find you have to include a walk along the towpath as part of your training, but I’ll take successes where I can and with the husband working away I needed to be creative.

Not to be defeated I figured this gave me opportunity to indulge in some dry-side training (get me with the lingo). If I’m honest a week ago I had no idea what this actually meant. So the first step was to find out. This is where I got a little distracted surfing the net looking at new swimming costumes, recipes, baby clothes, reading entertainment news (my guilty pleasure)…… I did eventually come across some useful ‘dry-side’ info and realised sometimes the obvious is staring you in the face. I was already doing a similar routine as part of my cardiovascular training, I’d just got locked into thinking swimming was a completely separate endeavour.

Which meant I was now towpath walking with intent, none of the usual meandering and pointing out scenery to a sleeping baby, even managing to resist stopping to feed peckish looking ducks. Buoyed by the sunshine I made grand plans to walk the 5.5 miles from Newbury to Kintbury every week, the perfect opportunity for a bit of cardio and a crafty diet coke at the Dundas Arms….40 mins into the first walk we turned around in the drizzle and I downgraded my plans to possibly going once a fortnight.

In a way I’m glad I’ve had this week. Not being able to do what I plan always makes me have a wobble and lets self-doubt creep in.  For me this is one of the challenges of taking part in the Henley Mile: Learning to accept that yes, life just sometimes gets in the way. The week’s training wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I guess like many women when I’m in the zone I’m in the zone, but when one bit wobbles, it has a domino effect and everything wobbles. So it feels good this week to have 2 swims under my belt already.

Oh and how could I forget! … the official Selkie/This Girl Can/Henley Mile swim hat arrived and with it the realisation that: a) it is impossible to take a remotely flattering selfie modelling the swim hat and b) they are impossibly tight to get on – if I struggle this much with a hat how am I going to manage a wetsuit!